Stripping away cancer's death sentence

The recent announcement by former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw that he has multiple myeloma made me think of my father.

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By Donald W. Blount

recordnet.com

By Donald W. Blount

Posted Feb. 23, 2014 at 12:01 AM

By Donald W. Blount
Posted Feb. 23, 2014 at 12:01 AM

» Social News

The recent announcement by former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw that he has multiple myeloma made me think of my father.

He was 64 years old when he died from complications of multiple myeloma 171/2 years ago. He lived less than three years after his diagnosis.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the blood cells that begins in the bone marrow. In short, and my terms, plasma cells, white blood cells that usually produce antibodies that fight infection, go haywire. Too many are produced and they turn malignant, affecting the bones, kidneys and other organs.

Multiple myeloma can eat holes in the bones of its victims. A sufferer can break a bone doing the most routine act. My father broke a rib just sneezing.

I do not recall the specifics of his treatment. I do remember his doctor being encouraging and my father undergoing a litany of treatment, primarily chemotherapy and dialysis - none of it pleasant.

Those were dark days.

"Back in 1996 we knew very little about multiple myeloma," Chun Ng said. Ng is an oncologist based at Kaiser Permanente's Stockton Medical Offices on West Lane. The primary treatment for the disease was chemotherapy, he said. "And that did not work."

The chances of a patient living five years after diagnosis was less than 5 percent, Ng said. The conversation with patients and their families "was very sad."

But fortunately for many, things have changed.

Not that there is ever a "good" time to be diagnosed with any type of cancer. But this is a better time than any time in the past for the more than 20,000 people who will be diagnosed with multiple myeloma this year.

Advances in treatment make it so that the disease can be managed and those with it can still lead their lives.

Just look at Geraldine Ferraro. In 2001, the first female vice presidential candidate for a major U.S. political party, publicly disclosed that she, too, had multiple myeloma. Ferraro would live another 10 years, dying at age 75.

And in the past year, National Public Radio reported on multiple myeloma.

The person the organization interviewed was in his 70s and running marathons. Yes, he was averaging seven marathons a year, according to the report.

A combination of new drugs, and even an old one - thalidomide, a drug that is known to cause birth defects - found a new use in fighting multiple myeloma, making it so that patients, although not cured, would not have their illness advance. Some would even go into remission.

And as this one man showed, they could continue living full and active lives.

"We have gotten it controlled better," he said. A key is to get it controlled for a very long time.

Although there is still no cure, victims could still hope to live long enough to die of something other than cancer, such as old age. My dad would have turned 82 a little more than two weeks ago. I gladly would have enjoyed more time with him.

Yet I am glad that others affected by this dreaded disease, including Tom Brokaw, can have a better outcome than my family experienced.

Contact Donald W. Blount at (209) 546-8251 or dblount@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/editor blog and on Twitter @donblount.